November 2007

Welcome MSN Money smartSpending readers! We’re glad to have you with us! Now on to the goodies . . .
Some swear they’ve never gotten sick while traveling when using it; others call it a placebo. Just in time for the holiday cold and flu travel season, you can try it yourself for free and [...]

If you fly often, you know the drill: what (not) to wear, take off your jacket and shoes, empty your pockets, take out your laptop, take out your baggie of travel-sized liquids. If you don’t know at least these five things when you approach the security checkpoint, you are holding up everyone behind [...]

1) Apply for a passport. There will soon be few trips Americans can take without one, so don’t be caught unprepared. Now is the best time to apply, before the rush begins again in January for summer travel. They won’t be getting any cheaper either, so there’s no hurt in getting yours [...]

Every Saturday starting December 8, Less Than a Shoestring will be highlighting budget travel posts from around the blogosphere. You want to be in on the action? Submit your travel posts (or encourage your favorite travel blogs to submit) by each Wednesday via Blog Carnival. You can find further details in the [...]

This week, “Frugal Traveler” Matt Gross of the NY Times details a weekend in Seattle. Again, he has the envy-worth budget of $500 for two days on the town (which I guess makes me a “grunge aficionado” in his book). We’ll look more closely at where his money goes after the jump.

One of the frustrations of being a tourist is often, well, other tourists. They’re everywhere you go; you can’t get away from them, right? (Now imagine how the locals feel.) In places like Florence, the sheer number of extra bodies between Duomo and Uffizi is simply overwhelming.
It’s not news that by traveling [...]

It seems my whole world is on strike lately, what with not being able to ride the suburban trains here in Berlin or get my almost-daily “Daily Show” fix on the interwebs. It’s no good living 2 minutes from the S-Bahn station or having high-speed when your public servants of transportation and humor refuse [...]

Grace and Co. over at design*sponge have put together a number of city guides highlighting interesting retailers and restaurants in major cities across North America. While I expect most of the goods on display to tip the high end of the scale, there are a handful of secondhand and antique stores recommended and inspiration [...]

It hurts, oh boy, does it hurt. I’m currently living in the heart of the euro zone on withdrawn U.S. funds, meaning I feel each fall of the dollar acutely. The expert prognosis isn’t looking good either. Maybe you’ve been chocking those U.S. price increases up to higher fuel costs, but the [...]

Further passing on the costs of service directly to the consumer, RyanAir recently altered their check-in model. Whereas online check-in was formerly linked to priority boarding and was a privilege to be purchased for 6 euros, they have turned the tables and made online check-in the free standard, with anyone needing counter service (namely [...]